After driving through snow, I leave the weather system as I travel south on Vancouver Island, from Woss. I’m going to do a resupply in Campbell River, then head a little further south to some of the last little bit of crown land between there and Courtenay. I’m not sure what I’ll get, but I am prepared for gates leaving me no choice but to pay for a campground.
I could try stealth camping, but it would be a bit tricky right now. My power situation is not great. I have 100W of solar, and a battery that isn’t up to snuff for sure. It really is better if I can put out the generator and crank the heat for a while without worrying about running out the battery. I’d really prefer to stay on the island, close to the ocean for a bit longer. Looking at the forecast on the mainland, it’s still going to be pretty chilly at night. Again, if I had more battery juice, I could hack it a bit better. Yeah, electrical upgrades are high on my list of things to do, once I’m done with this current journey south.
Holmes Road, several branches lead off here
My resupply in Campbell River goes without issue, but I hurry along as I want to have time to explore a bit should finding my spot not be so straightforward. The googles takes me down the secondary highway 19A rather than the main freeway 19, so I get to see a little more of the local flavor of the area. It is a mix of rural residential and small business, with a lot of that catering to the vacation crowd here in the summers. I turn off just before Merville, which is really not much more than a slightly more dense set of rural housing and a gas station. Going down the paved roads, I see lots of private property – definitely no boondocking here. But eventually after a couple of turns I hit gravel road and finally some forest with no ‘private property’ signs. My turn onto Holmes Road is according to the googles only – there is no street sign and the road looks like a basic one lane gravel logging road, somewhat growing in. The vegetation comes in close enough that I pull in the mirrors. I was going down to where I can see on the aerial imagery there is an opening that might be a camping spot. It indeed is suitable for camping, but it is also a junction with three roads leading off in different directions – I likely would get traffic going by if I parked off to one side here.
Firepit, junk pile, bones, and mostly rotted deer skull to complement my RV
I decided to take a quick walk down what seems the most promising branch, leading to a recently logged area. There are some shrubs intruding on the road, but nothing too scrapy. A couple more branch choices and I reached a smaller siding on the road, with the road getting worse past this. I liked the open sunny spot that looks fairly level. I didn’t like the junk lying around. I really didn’t like all the animal bones and mostly rotted deer skull strewn about. The good cell signal breaks the tie, and I head back for my RV, bringing it to this spot. I did a quick walk further down the road and saw it dead ends shortly, that area is worse than what I’m parked at so here I stay. I’d have explored a bit more, but the brush and trees scrape up against the RV pretty good in places. I can explore a bit on foot later and move if I find something much better.
In the meanwhile, I moved the bones into the junk pile, and that nasty skull got picked up with a stick and tossed into the bush away from camp. I try to leave things better than I found them, but in this case I’d need a pickup bed to hold all the trash and bones around here. It’s sad. But I can’t say I’m really surprised – this crown land is surrounded by civilization, and some people have no problem dumping their junk on public land, or anywhere they can get away with it for that matter.
One thing that definitely was here originally is the large erratic only a few metres into the young trees from my camp. You can actually see it in the googles aerials of the area, it’s a pretty big rock. It also is acting as a tombstone for ‘Stella’, a dog, I would hope, that has been buried here. The stone is a testament to the lush environment around me – a tree was growing on top of the stone before the area got logged, you can see a bit of its stump sticking up in the picture, with the roots coming around towards me.
Road to the McLoughlin gardens
The civilization around here is mostly rural residential, but there are a few sights to see around here. My first destination was the McLoughlin Gardens, part of a residential sea side property that was given to the local government. The house is now an artist in residence place, by invitation only. How do I get an invite so I can come out and take photos and write my blog there???
The signs for the property warn you that an artist may be in residence, please respect their privacy. I saw someone in the house, so now I’m all not sure where I can go on the property. I decided to stay by the front part on the ocean, thinking the back might be more private.
The sedum in my garden was a little different variety but I know this takes time to grow in like this
The rock path loop is nice, but it is a little early for the garden. It certainly was easy to get the materials for the path – these stones came from the beach just metres away from here. There are a few flowers starting to bloom, but they are in the shade while I was there. I content myself with a little sedum picture, and head out onto the rocky beach.
Looking south towards Eagles Park
The coast along here shows signs of development in the distance, but you can ignore that and pretend you are still in unspoiled nature by the ocean here. To the north of me are more private properties, so I decided to wander south a bit. The lots off the beach are still private, but not developed, yet.
The seals were keeping a close eye on me from the rocks and the water
At first I just thought they were funny shaped rocks, but it turns out a bunch of seals are perched up there, catching the morning sun. I had forgotten about seals – having not seen any close up since my first days on the island. While I didn’t have the SLR with the telephoto on me, 200mm on my Sony point and shoot was enough to pull in a pretty decent picture. I did not even have to crop too much. But the seals would not let me get closer than this, a sneeze on my part sent a bunch of them into the water. Sorry dudes, salt air and all that got me going.
I debated walking all the way down the rocky beach to Eagles Drive park, then looping back on the greenway. I decided against that – beach walking on the large round rocks is a slow, slippery and tiring thing. Walking down the Eagles Greenway was going to be much faster, even with having to climb back up the road, then cut over to the greenway.
The sun lasts just long enough for me to get one good flower picture before I leave the grounds for the greenway. The classic spring Daffodils are remains of a much more extensive garden that must have gone up the road access leading away from the house. Now you just see a few remnants, with the native vegetation predominating for the most part. The McLoughlin’s donation of this property has preserved a state that was Vancouver Island fifty years ago – much more modest houses spaced on large lots anywhere away from the towns of the day. Now, we have small cities nearby with these lots either having been subdivided out into small residential lots, or monster mansions sitting in the middle of the large lots.
I walked up and down the greenway a few times going to various attractions, and did a stroll further down this gravel beach on a later day. This lot is advertised both on the road side (the roads dead end on both sides of the greenway) and the beach side. I looked up this property, $4,500,000?! No development to the property, I’d say only power to the property line. But if you have the kind of dosh to consider this, you’d not care if you have to put in your own services. I made myself an ‘appointment’ and inspected the property – there is a little road going down it accessible from the beach. Yeah, there is a good level stretch to build a house on this, but the beach is all rocky, and town is a ways away. Looking at what few other lots are available in the area, I see a half acre for a half a million. That would have been a whole house in decent shape not so long ago, now that is a raw lot, with an ocean view, not beach front! I’m ranting a bit about these prices, but with good reason – the bubble in the market is very big right now. If interest rates actually get anywhere close to 10% for financing, there will be a major crash – that is with rates I thought were reasonable at the time I was taking my loan out! I’ll stick to my RV and renting my house out, thank you very much.
While it is nice to have things to see around where my camp is, a downside of being in a little forest surrounded by civilization is that other people come into the forest. I was writing away on my blog one day when I hear a diesel truck coming down my road. A bright red new truck pulls up and looks over everything in camp. I waved out the window, but I’m not sure he could see me through the tinted glass. After he completed his four point turnaround, I go out to visit.
Young enforcer
I step out to see a young lady in the passenger seat now facing me. We exchange greetings. One of the first things out of her mouth was “you’re going take all that mess when you leave?” in a distaining tone like I’m some sort of homeless person. I explain I take what I can, but my garbage collection capacity is not up to that pile of junk and bones left behind by others. I’m fully aware I might be looking at one of the culprits of this junk. The junk left around here is mostly leftovers from hunting, including a lot of spent shell casings.
Mr. Enforcer told me I’m on private land, and I shouldn’t be camping here. I respectfully disagreed, but he ain’t going to yield the point. He talks about how this should all be gated off so people can’t drive in there. Well, you’d be out of a Sunday drive then too, buddy. I can see they would rather I not be there, but too bad, I know I’m in the right. Had they been smart, they would have been friendly, telling me about all the parties that go on in there on the weekends, in fact they were scoping out a spot for a party right now. Now that would have been more likely to get me to vacate, at least before the weekend. The truck left, but not without leaving me on high alert going forward. That pair ticked off several boxes on the ‘might be trouble’ list.
Salmon Berry flower
That meant I was packing things up and setting up more like I was stealth camping. My generator was now only out when I was running it – the rest of the time it was parked inside ready to take off. Everything else inside was cleaned up so that in an emergency I could just hop in the driver’s seat and go. Of course, my sleep was not restless, I was awake with every strange sound. It turned out I did get one car come into camp on the Friday at midnight. I was ready to hop out of bed, but they turned around and left as quickly as they came in. No doubt a couple of kids looking for a quiet place to make out.
Path/road in the north forest at ‘Jakes corner’
There were a few other people in the woods during the days. These woods are used by walkers and cyclists too around the area – I ran into a mother and son with mountain bikes going down the road. The forest to the north of me is thicker and has not had any logging done in a long time. There are roads in there too, but they are grown in enough that they really are more paths than anything. I saw little in the way of boondocking in there, and the tracks were of the bike and foot variety. But most roads are still open, you could drive in. I’m sure a lot of the locals would vote for gating everything off if the government offered it. It would not surprise me to see that happen soon up here – nothing is stopping the government from doing that other than money to put up and maintain those gates. In the meanwhile, I’ll enjoy the free camping while I can.
Boat launch straight ahead, campground to the right.
I did walk a little further one day to visit Kitty Coleman Park. This is a provincial park with a campground and a nice boat launch. The campground was not yet open for the season, but there were people parked at the boat launch enjoying the nice day. You could walk a short distance into the campground and use a picnic table for day use. Just pack everything out – the garbage cans are locked in the winter so they don’t have to come around and collect the garbage.
While the campground is clean with nice ocean views, you might as well be in a parking lot – the sites are totally open with just a marker delineating the border between you and the next site. There are some sites further away from the water with more privacy, I would go for that myself.
There is a nice creek that has been restored according to the sign. You have some walking trails too that I did not have time to explore – I was already out at my maximum distance for the day being at the campground.
I finally found a proper old growth tree at this park. It had been saved at the last minute according to the sign, you can see the initial cut mark still in the bark at waist height where I am standing in front of the tree. When you look back at the history of logging, big trees like this one close to the water were some of the first to be taken. With the hand and steam power of the day, something near water was what could be harvested. The sign by the tree did not tell me when they saved it though – I had been wondering when initial logging had occurred along the coast, now I can only speculate we are talking somewhere in the early 1900’s.
I did not take many pictures of the big houses – most were somewhat obscured from the road, having their ‘best’ side facing the ocean. But I was impressed by this backyard palm tree, not the most northerly, but certainly one of the best specimens I’ve seen on the island. This was not even a ‘rich’ property by the standards here, just a nice tree probably babied by its owner. The rich around here do have nice plantings, with spring flowers out in many places now. Even some fruit trees were flowering, how nice!
The forest around my campsite was not very big. I was able to explore down every road while I was there, although there were a few trails I missed. It turns out my boondocking spot is the junkiest, another spot to the northwest of me in another logged out area was much cleaner and would be my choice for a subsequent visit.
Of course, people have been throwing away junk forever in out of the way corners of forests. This old truck was one example, the commercial lettering is just still visible on the door.
Then you have this 70’s era car, Datsun, perhaps? I’m not taking the time to match that frame. You wouldn’t get stuff like this these days – the metal scrap value is just enough to make them worth taking to the wreckers. This beast might be a little too rusty now for that, but there is an engine sitting there, might still be worth hauling away for a fifty?
My time in the forest here ended a bit abruptly. I had run out of propane a bit earlier than expected. I stayed through the Friday night out of stubbornness – no one was going to kick me out of my spot, including the Friday midnight visitors! But since I’m having to move anyways to get propane, I might as well check out another small crown land area near here that is a little bit further out from civilization. I might be able to go off of high alert and relax a bit more again. See you next time when you can find out how that worked out!
